the debris story is a sample of the low esteem they place on us. The Black Knight was sighted when Sputnik was orbiting.It was later photographed and estimated at 10 tons. What's more it was in a polar orbit and we didn't have the thruster to do that. The Russians had used the launch vehicle for an ICBM and achieved a degenerating orbit with about 150 pounds of payload. To say we put that up is laughable.

Quoting: Kirk

I guess it was tracked optically and by radar, that's for sure. And photographed certainly, of course (and you can think about USA, Russia, Canada, UK & France at least, but I think EVERY observatory on Earth was tracking it), but I've not seen a simple pic of it yet.

It was said in the 50s that one of the two "asteroids" (the remaining one in 1955) varied its position from 1000 Km to 50 Km altitude...